The familiar adage “Go slow to go fast” applies in the case of literacy leadership teams. Slowing down and taking the time to develop a team may seem unimportant or time consuming. However, we believe the long-term benefits are worth the effort.
Addressing Resistance
It is normal to experience resistance and pushback. Leadership teams can neutralize the negativity of those teachers who may be less than enthusiastic by discussing, planning, and establishing support structures before the real work of improved instruction begins. In the early stages, the literacy leadership team should provide the necessary expertise and leadership to support teachers as they begin implementing effective word-learning strategies.
As learning and practices deepen, team members use the principles of tight and loose leadership (DuFour & Eaker, 1998) around specific parameters for vocabulary instruction across the school. For example, they may decide that every teacher must provide direct vocabulary instruction each day in some manner (tight parameter); however, teachers determine which strategies and tools work best to support word learning for their students (loose parameter). Finally, the literacy leadership team may provide additional support and feedback to teacher teams and encourage collaboration and sharing through the use of digital tools.
Using Collaborative Tools to Support Literacy Leadership Teams
Sharing among teams and teachers is a key ingredient, we think, to keep the momentum strong across schools and is also important for continual improvement. Our term blended vocabulary refers not only to blending direct instruction with digital tools that extend word learning but also to blending formats of professional learning and collaboration. Teams can collaborate more simply than they once could. Traditional forms of professional learning may include sharing in staff meetings, learning from a literacy expert during a professional development day, engaging in book studies, and collaborating within a structure such as professional learning communities. While sharing and collaborating occurs during these opportunities, it can sometimes be limited to face-to-face encounters. Digital tools that support collaboration, on the other hand, allow teachers and teams to share beyond the constraints of designated times and in-person meetings, and provide a host of advantages that more traditional formats do not easily achieve. The following sections describe several effective tools and their key collaborative features. Visit go.SolutionTree.com/literacy for live links to these resources.
Shared Notebooks
Evernote (https://evernote.com), OneNote (www.onenote.com), and LiveBinders (www.livebinders.com) are web-based note-taking tools with sharing capabilities. Individuals create their own accounts to which they can easily add notes and notebooks. These tools have many advantages over traditional paper notebooks. Think of these tools as virtual filing cabinets. You can store various folders (called notebooks in these tools), each containing files (notes or pages). Useful features include the ability to easily add hyperlinks, webpages, tags, audio notes, and much more.
These virtual notebooks are perfect tools for team collaboration. Team members can easily share notebooks and pages, and no saving is necessary—changes to notebooks and pages save and sync automatically. As teachers learn and explore vocabulary strategies, they can easily share websites, tools, lesson plans, word lists, and more.
Teams can take advantage of online collaborative tools such as Twitter (https://twitter.com) to share ideas and celebrations along the journey. For example, we encourage teams to create a Twitter hashtag (#) using the name or initials of the school district, such as #Waynevocab or #ZSDvocab, to aggregate tweets from teachers. Across your school or district, teachers can tweet hyperlinks to strategies, vocabulary games, and digital tools. Additionally, they can tweet images of word walls and photos that show how they are integrating vocabulary learning across classrooms, schools, and the district.
Another way the leadership team can use this social media is to host a Twitter chat at a designated time. Leaders can use a hashtag such as #vocabchat to aggregate tweets, and facilitate the chat by posting questions such as, What is your number-one go-to vocabulary strategy for EL students? Participants introduce themselves at the beginning of the session and tweet responses to questions, including the hashtag #vocabchat following each response. Leaders can also invite vocabulary experts such as Kimberly or Angela to share insights, collaborate, and provide feedback to the instructional community. (Be sure to use the hashtag #blendedvocab to join in our ongoing discussion of this book and its concepts on Twitter.) If you are new to Twitter, we recommend downloading the popular Twitter Cheat Sheet (Tyson, 2012e) that helps teachers get up to speed quickly.
Backchannels
Backchannels are another popular way to collaborate, share thoughts and links, and receive feedback during professional learning. Think of backchannels as a means for participants to have background conversations that take place at the same time as the professional development session. Teachers can ask the presenter or other participants a question during the session without interrupting the flow of the session. Within the backchannel, participants can also easily share links, as they think of them during the presentation, to websites that may benefit other participants. There are several websites you can use for backchanneling. TodaysMeet (www.todaysmeet.com) is free and easy to use, and it’s the one that we have used most frequently at conferences. Other similar sites include Chatzy (www.chatzy.com) and Backchannel Chat (www.backchannelchat.com). We encourage you to learn more about backchannels by viewing the YouTube video Todays Meet for Classroom Backchannels (Brent @ EdTech.tv, 2015) and setting up your own backchannel to support professional learning.
Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) is a social curation network that allows users to share and categorize images. Users “pin” images, videos, and other visual information to categorized boards. Users can browse and discover what other users have pinned as well. In its simplest form, Pinterest is a huge, online bulletin board. Teachers could save and share ideas about word walls and vocabulary strategies on the site to support implementing vocabulary across grade levels and content areas.
Wikis
Wikis are websites that allow all users to create, edit, and alter information; how it’s presented; and how it’s structured. A school or a system could create a wiki as a storage and collaborative space for instructional strategies, templates, and bulletin board ideas, all with the intent of improving vocabulary instruction.
Google Docs and Google Sites
Many teachers use Google Docs to create, edit, and collaborate among colleagues. While sharing and collaborating with Google Docs is simple, educators can quickly and easily set up a Google Site to support vocabulary implementation. The site can serve as a common place for embedding documents, lesson plans, presentations, videos, links to websites, and more.
Examining Literacy Leadership Team Exemplars
In the following sections, we provide examples of both a schoolwide literacy leadership team and a districtwide literacy leadership team we’ve worked with, detailing how they worked together and the success they were able to achieve.